A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL, entertaining mystery set in WWII's corridors of power seen from below

A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL
JULIA KELLY
Minotaur Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From Julia Kelly, internationally bestselling author of The Last Dance of the Debutante, comes the first in the mysterious and immersive Parisian Orphan series, A Traitor in Whitehall.

1940, England: Evelyne Redfern, known as “The Parisian Orphan” as a child, is working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne on a night out, Evelyne finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms.

However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at work is murdered, and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise to find the killer. But doing so puts her right in the path of David Poole, a cagey minister’s aide who seems determined to thwart her investigations. That is, until Evelyne finds out David’s real mission is to root out a mole selling government secrets to Britain’s enemies, and the pair begrudgingly team up.

With her quick wit, sharp eyes, and determination, will Evelyne be able to find out who’s been selling England’s secrets and catch a killer, all while battling her growing attraction to David?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Period details FTW. I was reading along thinking how little I actually knew about life in WWII when the main character finds a body in a place I had no vaguest awareness of the need for or existence of: A sun treatment room.

A what now? Sun-treatment? What on Earth is that?

It was about that time that my interest and pleasure in the read sharpened to the point of reading past my bedtime. I'm a mystery fan anyway, being a big believer in ma'at and the scales of justice needing to be balanced. The victim of the murder wasn't a lovely person, as is customary in series mysteries set in the Halls of Power. It was a lovely grace note, the first of several, that the victim was discovered in the sun-treatment room. This afforded the author a perfect opening to reveal this very interesting, perfectly sensible detail's existence. It gives the story an extra gloss of period authenticity, as does Evelyne's Agatha Christie-reading habit. The author's an experienced historical novelist and it shows in these sorts of unexpected moments that firmly root the story in time without becoming stodged up like a research paper gone metastatic.

Evelyne, our main character, is an oddball in the world where she's been plonked because nothing in her background suggests she's a prospect for Greater Things...an unwanted daughter placed in a boarding school by her always-absent father after her mother's death when Evelyne was thirteen, she's been given few solid opportunities to develop her intellect beyond the ordinary. As is typical for series mysteries, as fans of the genre know, she's got the most important character trait of a sleuth: Ungovernable curiosity, starting from when her Maman (a French lady, who raised her daughter mostly in France) supposedly committed suicide. Luckily her absent rich-bastard father's friend circle includes powerful people who need that precise characteristic in a woman of presentable lineage (if always stained by the loucheness of her foreignness), adequate education, fluency in French, and unexceptionable looks.

Evelyne's sudden arrival in the bunkers...referred to by the acronym "CWR" or "Cabinet War Rooms"...of busy workers surrounding the Prime Minister isn't cause for anyone to take much notice, exactly as the Powers That Be need it to be. She blends into the scenery. As her job is to ferret out a traitor who's already established in those hallowed halls, everything's proceeding acording to plan.

Until someone's murdered. (There's a reason I'm being coy about who's been murdered. If you know too soon, there's no way you won't know who the titular traitor is.) The murder makes everything higher stakes and involves Evelyne with the inevitable love interest, David. Another facet of the series mystery is the de rigueur presence of a love interest or interests. David's clearly being positioned for this. This is, for me, the least interesting facet of the story. How would David, a senior aide established in the hierarchy, even think to team up with Evelyne, a mere girl and of known-but-stained ancestry? In 1940s Britain? That high in the Government (even if it's not quite the way we're led to believe)? Hmm, said my inner skeptic. Most especially I find the borning relationship between them Doomed because David prefers American thrillers to Evelyne's beloved Mrs. Christie. This is a less bridgeable gap than between a reader and a mundane.

While the usual first-mystery flaws are present, eg too much information comes too easily into Evelyne's grasp for her position in the hierarchy and people "grit" and "roar" things far too often, the author is clearly a skilled storyteller. The TV adaptation unspooled before my eyes, in six-part ITV period-mystery glory. It's the kind of book one reads with keen pleasure in its strengths, and forgives its lapses readily. At least this picky one did.

If you're in the market for historical mysteries, this one will scratch the itch. Nothing too deep, nothing too fluffy, just the right level of interesting background and emotional investment possibilities. Bring the sequel!